Independent Banker - January 2019 - 48

8 CYBERSECURITY
BASICS FOR BANKS
According to Theresa Payton, there are eight
cybersecurity basics that every community bank
should have in place:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Ability to conduct risk-analysis benchmarking
and tracking
A system that helps identify and store
classification of data and assets
Ongoing user security-awareness training
and testing
Testing tools that focus on application security
Internal (for employees) and external (for
customers) multi-factor authentication methods
Tools that support a multi-layered authorization
process across data elements, systems
and platforms
Network device, application code, credentials
and customer data discovery
Ability to sandbox attachments and links on a
virtual workspace to avoid contamination in
case antivirus and anti-malware software fail to
detect an issue
48 Q ICBA Independent Banker Q January 2019
of Virginia with a master's degree in management
information systems, she spent 16 years in the banking
sector before joining the White House in 2006 as chief
information offi cer under President George W. Bush.
" It was everything from inspiring and awesome and
an honor, to absolutely frightening if something were to
happen under your watch, " she recalls, " and thankfully,
nothing did. "
Payton says that after working in the banking industry,
she thought she had seen it all. " We were on the frontlines
of emerging technology, " she says. " I was seeing terrorist
fi nancing, money laundering. Then I started working at the
Executive Offi ce of the President, and I realized I had been
looking through a peephole into the closet of a mansion,
because I had no idea what the adversary was capable of and
at what level.
" We talk about it more openly now, but we didn't then.
We didn't talk openly with the public about China, Russia,
Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and what their capabilities
were. And even the capabilities of cybercriminal syndicates.
That was all not in the public domain. Up until recently. "
Moving into the private sector
Upon leaving the White House in 2008, Payton set up
security and intelligence operations consulting company
Fortalice Solutions to focus on emerging threats from
nation-state actors, anarchists and cybercriminal
syndicates. In 2014, she founded Dark Cubed, a
cybersecurity SaaS (software as a service) platform. Then,
having traveled from the server room to the boardroom,
where she was shielded from the media, Payton took the
unusual step of joining a reality TV show. Between 2016
and 2017, she was the deputy commander of intelligence
on CBS' Hunted, a role she relished.
" It was an incredible opportunity to engage and
hopefully entertain while enrage them about today's
modern cybersecurity issues-'Are you serious, people
can really do that?'-inform and educate, " she says.
" But I also hoped that it would inspire more men and
women-especially women-to consider cybersecurity and
intelligence operations as a career. "
Threats to community banks
Payton is keen to recruit because there's a lot of work to
be done. In the banking sector, current threats include
attacks from activists, such as what happened in 2010,
when Mastercard, Visa and PayPal suspended payments to
Wikileaks. In retaliation, the group Anonymous launched
Independent Banker - January 2019

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